


The Feegle Fortune

by ms_katonic



Series: The Inariel and Cicero Travelling Circus [2]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Crack, Crack, Crossover, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-06
Updated: 2012-10-06
Packaged: 2017-11-15 18:15:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/530232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ms_katonic/pseuds/ms_katonic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inariel Dragonborn had enough on her plate what with one short red-haired psychopath following her around and causing trouble.  Now she has fifty of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Feegle Fortune

**Author's Note:**

> One-shot Skyrim/Discworld crossover, again from a prompt on SKM. Unusually, it's entirely porn-free. Set in the same universe as Who Needs Mara?, but you don't need to have read that to read this. Although it probably would help to have a passing familiarity with the Nac Mac Feegle from the Discworld series.

It was an easy enough mistake. Three Elder Scrolls slung on her back from various different jobs, all looking exactly the same, it wasn't exactly hard after climbing all the way to the top of the Throat to have a momentary lapse in concentration and read the wrong one. Unfortunately, when you were the Dragonborn, teeny tiny mistakes had a way of becoming Great Big Ones very very quickly. As with the current situation.

Inariel put the scroll away and surveyed the scene before her. Had things gone according to plan, she would even now be seeing a vision of three Nord heroes banishing Alduin and learning Dragonrend off them. What she was now seeing was a big group of around fifty or so little blue men with red hair huddling together, all dressed like Nord bandits, talking like Brynjolf and armed to the teeth. And Cicero was not helping.

He was kneeling on the ground, dressed in the full set of glass armour she'd scrounged and given to him, dagger out, staring curiously at the small men. It was the hair, it had to be. Anything red and he'd be a man obsessed.

“Listener,” he began, understandably confused, “what are they? Are they supposed to be teaching you Dragonrend?”

“Crivvens, lad!” one of them shouted. “We dinna ken naethin' o' this Dragonrend!”

“Aye,” cried another. “It were nae us wha' took it!”

Oh dear. This was not going according to plan, not at all. Then Cicero managed to make things worse.

“Lies!” Cicero hissed, jabbing at the nearest one with the point of his dagger. “Listener Inariel would never have summoned you unless you knew about it, so tell her what the Dragonrend Shout is!”

“Ah dinna ken about Dragonrend but we can give ye a shout alright!” it shouted back at Cicero. “Get him, lads!”

Before Inariel could even react, the entire group had swarmed Cicero en masse, and the little jester had disappeared into a blur of snow and dust and blue and red and the golden flashes of sunlight off Cicero's armour. Cicero's helmet went flying, and cries of “Crivvens!” and “Bigjobs!” and “Get his family jewels, lads!” echoed around the Throat, interspersed with Cicero's higher-pitched shrieks of “GET OFF ME, YOU LITTLE FIENDS!” and “LEAVE POOR CICERO ALONE!”

A smaller group broke off and made for her, but Inariel was not Archmage for no reason and a swiftly cast Flame Cloak soon persuaded them that was a bad idea. Of course, that did mean they were all now swarming all over Cicero, who was now swearing profusely and promising to kill them all. Inariel felt very bad for what she was about to do to the poor man, as if he didn't have enough to contend with, but it was all she could think of. Gritting her teeth, she dual-cast Chain Lightning into the melee, hoping it would hit a few of the little blue men instead of him. Cicero's agonised shriek of “LISTENER!!!” made her wince, but a few of the blue creatures did stagger out of the melee as well, smoke rising from them and dazed looks on their face. She cast the spell again, and again until her magicka ran out. By this time, virtually all the creatures had got the message and had dispersed, huddling in a little group, their weapons drawn but not actually attacking. Inariel felt horribly guilty to see seven of the creatures lying motionless in the snow, ugly red slash marks from Cicero's dagger ensuring they at least would fight no more. Cicero himself was staggering to his feet, dazed, bruised, hair a mess with quite a few bits yanked out and scattered on the snow behind him, bleeding from numerous small cuts, bite marks to his ears, a split lip and a particularly nasty gash on his nose, and with a definite black eye, but he was grinning in triumph and clutching the creature that had ordered the attack in his gauntleted hand. It was just as well she'd given him the armour really, it was still trying to bite his thumb, without success.

“Cicero got their leader!” he cackled. “Cicero has their leader and now the rest will fall into line, yes? Does sweet Inariel wish to interrogate him now? Or shall Cicero end him?”

Sithis, no, if Cicero killed their leader, that meant the second in command would just take charge and start the fight all over again. As it was, Inariel was hoping there either wasn't actually a second in command or that if there was, he was either very loyal or very stupid.

“Big Hamish!” came an anguished cry from the mob. “Be careful, lad! Tha wee red Bigjob, he's nae human! He's the big Hag's demon familiar!”

“Aye,” cried another. “He's killed seven o' us! Seven! At once! Nae one's ever done that before! We've allus overwhelmed 'em by the time anyone's killed three!”

“Oh waily waily waily...” a third cried, sounding truly terrified and piteous.

“He's not a demon familiar,” Inariel sighed. “But he is very good at killing things. So can we all stop fighting please? That includes you, Cicero.”

Cicero still had his dagger pointed at the creature in his hand, who must be called Big Hamish from the sounds of it, but he was looking at her.

“Listener, what's a demon familiar?”

“It's something the Hagravens have, I think,” said Inariel, although what a demon was was anyone's guess. “A sort of pet that follows them around and does their bidding?”

“Ooh! So Cicero _is_ the Listener's demon familiar then!” Cicero looked far too pleased at this prospect. He turned his attention back to Big Hamish. “Listen here, worm! Cicero is the Listener's loyal demon familiar and you will answer her questions or Cicero shall crush you like a bug! Well?”

“Aye, aye, Ah'll talk, Ah'll talk!” Big Hamish cried, clearly terrified. “Lassie, we're sorry, we had nae idea ye were a Hag! Oh crivvens, and ye're a Fair Folk Hag too, Ah can tell from yer eyes.”

Well, the Altmer could be called the Fair Folk, she supposed. And while she certainly wasn't a Hagraven, she'd got no intention of giving up her one advantage either.

“Yes, yes, I'm a Fair Folk Hag. In fact, I'm not just any old Fair Folk Hag, I'm the Archma- ArchHag of Winterhold. I'm the one the other Hags all look up to, so you'd better start giving me a few answers. Who – what – are you and where did you come from??”

“Ha' ye nae heard o' us, yer Hagness?” Big Hamish asked, curious. “We're the Nac Mac Feegle. We used ta live in Fairyland, but the big Queen there, one o' your kind, she kicked us out. Now we wander where'er we fancy. Well, we did until ye called us here wi' yer fancy Hagcraft anyhow.”

“Yes, why did you summon them, Listener?” Cicero asked, curious. “They don't seem to know Dragonrend.”

This was true, but they weren't bad fighters either. Cicero may technically have won the fight with the Feegle, but he'd hardly escaped unscathed either. It took an awful lot of skill to do that to her jester boy, and was going to take a fair bit of healing magic to sort him out too. They could be useful, she was sure. Of course, first she had to come up with a convincing reason for summoning them and persuading them all that yes, of course the Dragonborn Listener and Archmage had meant to do this all along and totally hadn't ballsed up the entire operation by reading the wrong damn scroll.

Fortunately she was saved from having to answer by a flurry of black wings and an earthshaking thud as Alduin the World-Eater crashed on to the Word Wall. Paarthurnax, who had been watching all this with detached amusement, took to the skies.

“Dovahkiin,” he called, “if you have a reason for summoning these creatures, best put it to use now!”

Inariel had never been slow on the uptake and immediately pointed at Alduin.

“Nac Mac Feegle!” she cried. “Kill that black dragon!”

Cicero released Big Hamish, reaching for his bow, and the Feegle charged as one, screaming as they swarmed up the Word Wall and on to Alduin, chants of “Crivvens!” and “Death to the big black beastie!” echoing around the mountain.

In the days, weeks and years that were to come, the story would arise of a majestic Archmage Dragonborn, resplendent in her famed helmet of dragonscale and her trademark grey armour with its flowing cloak spread out behind her in the breeze, holding an Elder Scroll to the heavens and summoning a horde of red and blue Daedra from the Void itself that consumed the World-Eater's very heart and soul. In reality, Inariel could only look on in horror, peeping between her fingertips as the Feegle swarmed Alduin, hitting and biting and punching, perforating Alduin's wings so that when he tried to take off, he got about three metres into the air before crashlanding spectacularly into the ground, snow flying everywhere. Of course, once he was down, he was doomed, especially when Cicero joined in, ebony war axe in one hand, Dawnbreaker in the other, slashing and stabbing merrily away and singing “oh, if I find a crashing dragon, I'll have its skull for a new mead flagon!”

Alduin finally expired in a dramatic explosion of black fire, howling his last in broken Dovah that Paarthurnax later told her was something along the lines of “Noooo!!! I can't die! I am immortal! Get these little red-haired daedra off me- aaarrrrgggghhh!!!”

Finally it was all over, and all that was left of the World-Eater was a black crater on the ground with Nac Mac Feegle dancing jubilantly around it and Cicero capering in the middle, several Feegle sitting on his head and shoulders and clinging to his arms and legs, all whooping quite happily and all previous animosity forgotten.

Inariel stood staring, having literally no idea what to say or do next or even how she was supposed to react to this. She could honestly say she'd thought the defeat of the World-Eater would feel a little more... heroic than this.

Paarthurnax landed behind her, watching the whole scene in fascination.

“So, Inariel Dovahkiin,” he said casually. “Now that you have summoned these... Feegle, what are you going to do with them? I trust you have a way of sending them home?”

“I'm not sure they really have one any more,” said Inariel faintly, not sure how to admit she'd saved the world by accident. “They're nomads. Travellers.” And now they'd travelled to Tamriel and she had no idea how to get rid of them. Worse, Cicero had taken a shine to them and once Cicero decided he liked you, there was no getting rid of him as she'd found out.

“Listener, Listener!” he cried. “Can we keep them? Can we, can we?”

Frankly, the thought horrified her. And yet the thought of them roaming Tamriel unsupervised scared her even more.

“Well, I don't know,” she said, feeling dubious about this whole thing. “I've got to make sure they'd enjoy travelling with us first. Big Hamish!”

Big Hamish looked up from his perch on Cicero's right shoulder.

“Aye, yer Hagness?”

“What's the Feegle attitude towards stealing things?”

Big Hamish looked outraged at the very thought. “Yer Hagness! We're nae _thieves_! Feegle never steal anythin'!”

She knew it. There went that idea. No point one of Nocturnal's own acquiring a bunch of unruly followers with a moral objection towards theft, was there?

“O' course,” said Big Hamish knowingly, “we're famous for, er, borrowin' stuff. That its previous owners may have, er, misplaced. An' well, seein' as we travel so much, it gets awfully hard to keep track o' wha' we borrowed from who, ye ken.”

“Of course,” said Inariel, beginning to grin. She understood all right. “So if perhaps I needed you to, say, borrow a few items on behalf of a few friends of mine, you'd be fine with doing that for me, right? Don't worry about keeping track of where you borrowed it, I know a few fences who will take it off you, give you gold for your trouble, and ensure it gets back to its rightful owner.”

“Oh aye!” said Big Hamish, grinning knowingly back at her and nodding at his fellow Feegle. “We'd be happy to help ye out, yer Hagness.”

“That's so very kind of you!” said Inariel, becoming rather pleased with how this was working out. “Oh, but you'd have to make sure you weren't seen. Wouldn't want there to be any misunderstandings, would there?”

Big Hamish just grinned smugly. “Och lassie, dinna ye worry yer wee head about tha'. Nae one sees the Nac Mac Feegle unless we want them to.”

This just got better and better. Inariel wondered... but surely not...

“Also, from time to time, my Family and I, we occasionally get pleas for help from various good citizens regarding... disputes between them and other poor unfortunates, which we then have to... resolve. Might you be able to help in that regard?”

“Wha', ye mean stoppin' fights?” Big Hamish was scratching his head, and there was a general murmuring of suspicion among the rest of the Feegle. “It's nae our strong point, yer Hagness. In point o' fact, it's generally known we Feegle are rather better at startin' em.”

This brought a cheer and general noise of approval from the massed Feegle.

“Oh! Oh no, not like that,” said Inariel, realising she'd been a bit too subtle for her own good, and certainly for the Feegle. “I meant, stopping fights permanently. By, you know, killing someone.”

“Oh! Ye mean murrrderin' people. Ye should 'a said, lassie! O' course we can take care o' yer enemies for ye! Just point us in the direction of the scum ye want removin' and my lads can handle the rest. I take it yer earlier point about not gettin' caught or seen in case o' misunderstandins would apply here also?”

“Definitely,” said Inariel firmly.

“An... I imagine the good people o' Tamriel who these utter reprobates had been causin' trouble fer would be verra verra grateful for our services and be generous with their coin as well, aye?”

“Oh yes,” Inariel promised gleefully. “They always are.” She held out a finger and took Big Hamish's hand in hers. “So, you want to keep me and Cicero here company then?”

“Oh aye, lassie, ye've nae need tae ask twice! We'd be delighted to travel with such a fine pair o' folk as yerself and Big Mad Cicero here.”

“Cicero's not mad!” Cicero protested.

“Oh ye are,” said Big Hamish affectionately. “Ye're completely nuts, laddie. But tha's alright. So are Mad Fergus, Mad Angus, Mad Jock and Daft Gordo, but we still love 'em. Ye'll fit right in. Welcome to the Nac Mac Feegle, lad.”

Cicero squealed for joy, dancing on the spot and only narrowly managing to avoid squishing several of the slower Feegle. 

“Listener, Listener, Cicero's a Nac Mac Feegle!”

“Yes, dear, you fit right in,” Inariel said, unable to stop smiling at the sheer delight on his face. “Now come here, sweetie, I need to sort your face out. You're still bleeding, look.” A couple of Healing potions, a Cure Disease potion (just in case) and a good dose of the Heal Other spell later, and Cicero was looking himself again. Her sweet, handsome madman.

“There you are, honey,” Inariel whispered. “Don't you look prettier now?” She tilted his chin up, leaned down and kissed him gently on the lips. Cicero began to kiss her back, arms sliding around her as Feegle leapt for safety.

“Ye ken, Hamish,” Inariel heard one of the Feegle saying. “Ah dinna think he's her demon familiar at all. Ah think she's his kelda.”

Cicero broke off the kiss, frowning. “What's a kelda?” he asked. Most of the Feegle looked away at this point, all clearly embarrassed and Big Hamish was blushing profusely.

“Ah, well, ye see, ye may have noticed there aren't any lady Feegle about an' that's coz they're not born often an' are quite rare. When one is, she grows up tae be a kelda, an' that means she takes a few o' her brothers, joins another group o' Feegle, marries the Big Man o' the group, an' then she takes charge o' it. Ye ken, runs the place, tells her man wha' tae do, keeps the rest o' us in line, tha' sort o' thing.”

Inariel opened her mouth to say she was nothing of the sort, but Cicero got there first, nodding enthusiastically.

“Oh yes,” he said cheerfully. “The Listener is definitely Cicero's kelda.” He kissed her on the cheek and put his arm around her waist, oblivious to her embarrassment.

“Cicero!” she hissed. “I am not your wife! And since when have you been the Dark Brotherhood's Big Man??”

“Since Cicero walked in on Nazir getting out of the bathtub that one time,” Cicero grinned, flicking his eyebrows lasciviously. “And if we are not married, well, Cicero is not going anywhere and sweetest Inariel is not going to stop being Listener. Cicero can wait. Cicero is patient.”

Cicero was going to get a smacked arse if he didn't start behaving soon, but Inariel had a horrible feeling he'd enjoy that.

“Come on,” she sighed, putting an arm around his shoulders. “Let's get off this mountain. I need to work out what to do with you all.”

She idly wondered what Nazir would make of these new additions to the Family. Not to mention how Brynjolf would react to his new Guildmates. At least Mercer was no longer in a position to obje- wait. Mercer. Still out there, still needing... dealing with. A viciously cruel smile crossed her face. Yes, Mercer's reaction to the Feegle would be interesting, very interesting indeed.

“Come on everyone,” she laughed. “We're going to a place called Irkngthand. I promise you you'll like it, plenty of loot, plenty of fighting, oh and one of those filthy dregs of humanity who needs removing. After me!” With Cicero wrapped around her, she led them off the mountain, the voices of the Feegle echoing after her.

“So Hamish, if the Big Fair Folk Hag's our new kelda, and she's havin' relations with yon Big Mad Cicero... does that mean he's our new Big Man then?”

“Doan' be silly, Wee Big Angus, o' course he's not the Big Man, I'm still yer Big Man, ye ken me?”

“Oh, so ye were plannin' to have relations with the Fair Folk Hag then, were ye? Does Mad Cicero ken tha', yet? I'm thinkin' he might nae be so pleased wi' that state o' affairs. Just ma gut instinct there.”

“I'm nae scared o' Mad Cicero!”

Silence.

“I tell ye, I'm nae scared! Just because he's got that wicked pointy fancy knife o' his wi' that sharp edge, and he sliced thru Mad Dinna Ken and Big Angus like they wasnae even there, and I didnae think anyone would ever get the better o' Big Angus, and then whan he wedged tha' black beastie's mouth open wi' his axe an' shoved that flamin' sword o' his down the beast's throat... look, the Fair Folk Hag's not ma type, ye ken? It'd nae work, an' then things'd be awkward, see? So I'm delegatin' that part o' ma job to Mad Cicero, an' he can do all that kelda-herdin' for me. Sounds tae much like hard work, tryin' tae keep a kelda happy, ye ken wha' I'm sayin'?”

“Aye, we ken, Big Hamish. We ken exactly.”

The little procession trooped off down the path, heading back to the rest of Skyrim. Paarthurnax watched them go.

“ _Meyye Vomindoraan_ ,” he sighed, feeling rather sorry for Inariel. Still, if anyone could cope with all that lot, it was the Dragonborn. He had faith in her. Stretching his wings, feeling newly young again in a world without Alduin, he took to the skies. With the Feegle on the ground, the sky felt like the safest place to be.

**Author's Note:**

> I apologise for my butchery of the Scottish accent, but it was crying out to be written...


End file.
